Holiday Inn Express Cheltenham Town Centre by IHG — Hotel in Cheltenham

This is second time we accommodated in this hotel. Everything is terrible! We changed 3 rooms in order to have a reasonable settled. The first room allocated was very dirty. The red and yellow paint were stained on the carpet as attached in the pictures. The second room being allocated has no air conditioning because the switch near the roof was turning off. We asked for help from the hotel, the staff asked me and my husband to switch it on because the switch was so high that they can’t reach. We couldn’t do it because the switch was not reachable. After some discussion, we changed the third room. We are so exhausted because we are carrying two big luggage cases and two big back bags! The staff did not offer any help any way. At the end, we need over 45 minutes just to settle the room in a non rush hour.The most terrible thing happened in the second morning! Our door was sudden opened around 10:20. When I was having hair blew, I have to stand behind the door. Someone use the key card to open our room door. As my husband is in the room, my reaction was force close the door immediately. I heard a lady said ‘Oh no’ and because I’m so scared, my husband try to open the door again and find what happened. But we saw no one in the corridor and no housekeeping trolleys as well. We reported to the reception immediately because there may be security problems. They said they will try to find out the reason and they guess the one opened the door should be housekeeping. However there was no follow up so I tried to call for the manager. Even meeting with the duty manager, Mr Carlum, there was no updated information. It seems nothing happened. The reasons for choosing to accommodate in the hotel but not air BnB was ‘security’. I’m near fifty and I accommodate in the hotel for over thirty years. We go travelling nearly 2 to 3 times a year. We have never met such ridiculous things before! Even the truth is the housekeeper doing the housekeeping. They have to give us some time to walk to open the door after knocking the door. The normal practice should be knock the door and say housekeeping, giving the guests some time to open the door or knock the door and wait a moment for no one answer, then open the door. But please NEVER NEVER knock the door and open the door immediately!! Besides, we have NOT hang the tag ‘ready for housekeeping’! The things happened around 10:20 in the morning. The normal check out time for the hotel was 11am and check in time was 3pm. If the things happened around 1pm, it may be not so terrible! To conclude, the hotel management is rubbish! That’s not only the fault of the housekeeping. The management did have the responsibility! Their training system is **. What we guess the problem was there were some wrong information sent to the housekeeping and they were just not doing the job well. After reporting to the reception the case, there was no answer. After talking to the duty manager and leave further contact information, there was still no answer...

We stayed for one night for a friend's birthday in the town centre - 5 mins walk from the hotel, the hotel was perfectly placed! While still being annoyed at the lack of free parking, £10 for 24 hours was bearable thanks to the hotel discount on the NCP; and the staff were all friendly and courteous at all times.

The room was spotlessly clean - the only negative was the tiny bins and the complete lack of toiletries! If they had flagged this on the booking or confirmation email I would have come prepared, but while Dove Cream Wash is great for handwashing it doesn't work as face wash so I went to bed feeling somewhat dirty and then had to use the combined Shower Gel & Shampoo on my face in the morning!

Ahh yes, the morning - we were woken rather rudely at 7am with a fire alarm, only to find upon hurriedly getting dressed and racing downstairs that it was a false alarm ... followed by a further attempt at an alarm just as we got back to the room, so to say our sleep was disturbed was an understatement! These things happen, but it was a shame, as we hadn't got to bed till gone 1am as it was! They did offer extended check-out but we decided to get on our way instead to beat the traffic.

The shower was powerful, though the curtain covered the plug so the water wasn't draining very well. The shower gel ran out after I had washed my face and arms, so thank goodness the other half had some on him; but I couldn't wash my hair so not the best, especially after the alarm situation!

I had been warned about breakfast by my other half who had stayed in a HE Express in Bristol but I thought he was overexaggerating - he wasn't. They should cut the hot food (the sausages were nice, and the beans were ok, but I don't eat mushrooms and the eggs seemed powdery. 4 items - that is the extent of their hot breakfast) and concentrate on continental which was good - toast and jam, delicious croissants and pain aux chocolats, Kelloggs cereals, fruit, yogurts, tea, coffee and juice. If I stay in an Express again I'll be sure to fill up on cold items!

The discounts at the local restaurants are nice, and the free use of the pool/gym at Fitness First is a massive plus - but not knowing about that until we arrived meant that we hadn't brought any cossies/gym kit, so no could do. I think they need to make the website better in this regard, as if you haven't stayed in an Express before then you have no idea of what is and isn't available to you!

Overall, clean, comfortable and friendly, and in great proximity to the town, but let down by a couple of things that can easily...

We had a horrendous stay at this property. The first room had black mould in the shower and we were moved to room 5. When the young manager moved us to this room on Tuesday and was adjusting the air conditioning we all noticed a banging sound from the door. He went to investigate as he thought the cleaners were trying to get in but came back and said he couldn’t see them!

Room 5 is in a short corridor with an entrance to another room and another door which connects the corridor to another corridor. Opposite this door on the second corridor there was an entrance marked PRIVATE. After moving rooms we were out and about attending several appointments as we are moving to Cheltenham.

That night we noticed a similar banging sound several times and we put it down to the occupant of the other room in the small corridor coming and going. The same thing happened the next night with Wednesday night and early morning Thursday being far worse than Tuesday night….. it seemed to go on every hour or so. As a result we had a really horrible time in this Hotel with broken sleep continuously. On Thursday morning we discovered that the door of room 5 is loose in the frame and when closed it rattles/bangs every time someone either opens and closes the door to the other room or even when (as we discovered from the receptionist) when the hourly night time checks are done or a member of staff lets the PRIVATE door self close. The door leading to these two rooms is not allowed to close by the staff there (they keep it from closing /locking by turning the lock when open so it only partly closes and is stopped from fully closing/locking. On one return to our room the lock had been unlocked and thus the door was closed and locked and my key card would not open it (in fact my card disappeared inside the slot!!!).

Clearly the issue here is a complete lack of maintenance and care of both rooms rendering them both not fit for purpose. We were offered a 15% discount when leaving on Thursday morning but rejected this as inadequate and not a true reflection of the state of the two rooms and continually broken sleep for two nights Their Head Office has offered us some "points" which are of no use to me as I will never stay in a Holiday Inn again! Unless they offer me more than a 15% discount within 48 hours I will put the whole charge in dispute and report the extensive black mould to the HSE as this is a public health hazzard and should NEVER be found...